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Szkandelous.features.concertreviews.momus

How to make an audience hate you: Momus and Romanporsche
live at Ebisu's Milk, 3/15/02

Note: As you will read later, I thought Momus’
live show was excellent. Please don’t let the other musicians’
performances reflect on your opinion of Momus.

The first thing one notices when entering the main floor
of Ebisu's Milk is a gigantic movie screen taught across the left wall
from the main stage. I was a bit surprised that a musician as large as
Momus was playing at a club as small as this. I was not a Momus scholar,
all I knew at the time was that he got started in the 80's and had written/produced
for artists like Kahimi Karie, but I knew that the club was small.

The evening was supposed to start at a still-quite-early
9:00, so we showed up at 10:00. The show was an all-nighter given the
name "New Wave Gurentai-nishi-e" which is something like "New
Wave Thug Gang, to the West!" We should have known that with only
two bands an all-nighter would require some sort of magic or a lot of
stalling. Unfortunately, it was the latter.

While waiting for the show to start, the promoters took
the opportunity to play old synth pop and out of synch music videos from
the early 1980's. The highlights were Gary Numan's "Cars" and
an old Kraftwerk concert in Tokyo. Because the music and the videos were
not matched, impromptu games of "who is that obscure (and rather
ugly) artist in the video" erupted. On one particularly cruel occasion
we sat through what we thought was a music video only to discover it was
a whole live concert. I said the musician was Marc Almond, but I wanted
to be sure so we stopped talking and watched the whole thing, only for
it to be cut off before the ending credits.

About halfway through the televised Marc Almond(?) set
he dawned a leather biker hat and a group of muscular gay men came out
and danced behind Mr. Almond while attempting to remove Almond’s
jacket. As though it were the "gay hat", when he removed his
cap, another group of, this time, muscular women came out and began dancing
one to one with the men in an effort to defuse the latent homosexual elements.
I mention this because the show had been boring enough up to that point
that we had taken the time to analyze the symbolism used in a Marc Almond
concert.

Little did the audience know that Marc Almond would
become a motif for the evening. Every few minutes after the initial concert
footage a new Marc Almond video would appear on the gigantic video screen,
we'd realize later that the DJ also looked a little like a Japanese Marc
Almond, there was Soft Cell's music on the radio, and around us a hundred
Japanese people confoundedly watching like aliens with Marc Almond shaped
eyes.

As you can see, the first few hours of waiting were
an exercise in boredom.

Around 11:30 the opening act, Romanporsche, appeared
to the delight of all present. It was sadly a short-lived delight, for
we didn't know what was in store for us. Still, for the first few minutes
of their set we were glad to finally have live music.

Romanporsche: For you shall be gods

Romanporsche consists of two members: a man with long
hair and glitter around his eyes who sings and a stereotypically goth
middle aged man who sits at a bar table looking bored.

I've noticed a trend with Japanese shows: opening bands
tend to give a combination music/comedy performance consisting primarily
of the band yelling at the audience. The man with the long hair and mascara,
whom I shall call the lead singer, handled this most deftly, waxing at
length about the relation between gods, humans, and the members of Romanporsche.
Then brought out a baseball bat and posed for the crowd. About ten minutes
after the "start" of the show they finally played a song.

Step 1) An audience will hate you when you deprive them
of what they want. At a concert this would be music.

How can I put this delicately? Resembling current European
synth-pop artists like Zero Defects, Romanporche specializes in combining
now kitsch synthesizer lines and angry, violent lyrics in an inexplicably
innocuous way. The main instruments were pumped in from the club's sound
system while the lead singer screamed lyrics like "I'm going to kick
the shit" or "Omae wa baka" (“You are stupid!”).
To the left of the stage the dorky goth man sat as bored as the audience
occasionally turning knobs on what appeared to be a synthesizer in front
of him. He also sang some impressively high background vocals for a thirty-year-old
man.

Later that night I confirmed a suspicion I had had about
the goth guy. Whereas the lead singer guy programs all music and sings/writes
all lyrics, the goth’s sole function in the band is to control the
delay on the lead singer's voice.

His *only* function is to turn on and off the delay
on the lead singers voice.

"For my next trick": Both members
of Romanporsche in one of their pre-song interludes. (Click the picture
to go to the Momus Live Show Gallery)

After another 45 minutes of talking, occasionally breaking
to play a cheesy eighties rip off song the band packed up and, again to
the delight of the audience, left the stage.

...Only for the lead singer to return back to the stage
after only two minutes holding a toy gun, screaming at the audience. And
this time, he was naked. What ensued was a rather long diatribe from the
lead singer, followed by another song. I will swear to my dying death
that the lead singer to Romanporsche practices dancing naked in front
of a mirror in order to hone his "nasty dance" technique.

Step 2) if you want an audience to hate you, take off
all of your clothes and shake your body violently.

But this was not the end. After finally putting on a
g-string, the lead singer treated the audience to a Carrot Top style prop
"comedy" show. As one would expect, the audience was not amused.
At the end of the set the lead singer ran through the audience to the exit, finally
concluding the story of Romanporsche.

In between Romanporsche and Momus the Marc Almond-like
DJ played underground hits from the early 80's. My favorite moment was
when he stopped right in the middle of an Ultravox song to say "Ultravox
kitsuii, gomen".

At first we weren't sure whether we were free of Romanporsche
or not because the DJ sang along to the first few numbers. The audience
started looking around hoping not to find Romanporsche’s lead singer.
When we saw a real, live DJ we all sighed in relief: that night at Ebisu’s
Milk elation was fleeting.

Step 4) To be hated emulate those who have been hated
before you.

But then the DJ decided that he wanted to contribute
his own part to the irritating atmosphere and, in addition to singing
with each song, played only one verse from each track.

Step 5) Note to you DJ kids out there, people do not
like it when you cut off their music. For further explanation, see Step
1.

Halfway through the DJ's set the stage crew brought
out Momus' ibook. The crowd grew solemnly quiet and the apple logo glowed
over the darkness like a lighthouse guiding the audience through the Scylla
and Charybdis of Romanporsche and DJ Marc Almond.

Momus: "Wearing a smile, and nothing at all
up on the catwalk" only with clothes

At last, at around 12:45 AM our pirate-like leading
man armed with laptop lighthouse, Momus, climbed the stage, hit the return
button, and the real show began.

Momus did not talk a lot, which, although it gives me
less quirks to mock, was a welcome change from Romanporsche. To our weary
ears his music was therapeutic.

The Momus that I had known before the concert was a
strange man, wild, dirty, with music intriguingly cute and electronic
but lyrics manic and harsh enough to scare away you parents. For some
reason I had mentally linked him to Tom Green.

But the Momus of March 15 was not one analogous to Tom
Green so much as one remniscent of a young boy stuck in bed, caught in
the dilemma of wanting to rush down to see his presents the minute the
clock strikes Christmas but being too afraid to touch the floor for fear
that monsters would catch him.

Momus during his first number

The show was quiet compared to Romanporsche, and Momus'
performance ranged from emotional animation to David Bowie rigidity. His
set reflected both his own works and three tracks originally performed
by Kahimi Karie. I think it is a testament to his performance that a one
eyed, middle aged, Scottish man can pull off the pikachu level-cuteness
of Kahimi Karie singing "What are you wearing".

After his main set he returned for one encore, leaving
the song to audience request. He turned down a couple of calls for one
of his 80's songs, and closed the set with one last Kahimi Karie track.
Then, like his little boy alter ego would, he closed his ibook and meekly
walked off stage.

More of the "David Bowie" Momus

The end, but not really

Without our beacon the crowd was lost. People went from
one person to another asking if there was another act; there were more
cheesy 80's music and more Marc Almond on TV. Word had it that there was
to be another live set from a band called "Violent Onsen Geisha"
which was a cool enough name to make me want to stay. And then came the
talk show.

Step 6) Once again, see step 1.

I do not know what the concert planners were thinking,
but it was not kind. The talk show featured both members of Romanporsche.
It seemed like a bad enough idea to bring back Romanporsche anyway but
to compound issues the talk show dragged on forever.

Two entirely unknown people accompanied the members
of Romanporsche and the entire dialog was, of course, in Japanese. As
far as I could tell, the audience was thoroughly disinterested with the
talk show.

Although I couldn't help feeling curious about a band
named "Violent Onsen Geisha", I was unfortunately unable to
withstand one more minute with Romanporsche. At a little past 2:00, tired
and hungry, hating naked men and endless talking, we left the show.